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Megan Fox Challenges Players on Xbox Live August 29th

Jason Rybka — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:29:17 +0000

Megan Fox, one of Hollywood’s most sought after young actresses and star of both the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen movie and videogame, will be on Xbox LIVE® on Saturday, August 29 at 3:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time to challenge fans in multiplayer matches featuring new characters and maps from the Transformers: Revenge of the [...]

Play Halo 3 with 3OH!3

Jason Rybka — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 04:14:03 +0000

Play Halo 3 with 3OH!3: “Electronic music group 3OH!3 stops by Xbox LIVE to play Halo 3 with Xbox LIVE Gold members August 25.” (Via Xbox.com Community RSS.)

Game with Fame: Play NBA 2K9 with 311

Jason Rybka — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 04:13:16 +0000

Game with Fame: Play NBA 2K9 with 311: “Alternative band 311 will play Xbox LIVE Gold members in NBA 2K9 on August 31.” (Via Xbox.com Community RSS.)

Section 8 : Section 8 Behind the Scenes Part III Trailer HD

Jason Rybka — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 03:18:13 +0000

Section 8 : Section 8 Behind the Scenes Part III Trailer HD: “Download and watch part three of the Section 8 behind the scenes series. In this episode, the dev team talks about the unique dynamic combat mission feature and deployables system found in multiplayer.” (Via Game Marketplace – New Arrivals.)

Activision threatens to stop making PS3 games

Matt Jo — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:08:00 +0000

The CEO of Activision - the largest third-party games software publisher in the world - has threatened that his company "might have to stop supporting Sony" unless the cost of the PlayStation 3 is soon reduced. "I'm getting concerned about Sony; the PlayStation 3 is losing a bit of momentum and they don't make it easy for me to support the platform. It's expensive to develop for the console, and the Wii and the Xbox are just selling better. Games generate a better return on invested capital on the Xbox than on the PlayStation," Activision CEO Bobby Kotick told The Times . "They have to cut the price, because if they don't, the attach rates are likely to slow," he added. "If we are being realistic, we might have to stop supporting Sony. When we look at 2010 and 2011, we might want to consider if we support the console — and the PSP too." Dystopian future for PS3 So, in Kotick's currently rather dystopian view of PlayStation's future, unless Sony can reduce the cost of the hardware to the consumer and boost sales considerably over the next twelve months, there is a likelihood that PlayStation gamers will stop seeing annual refreshes of their favourite Activision gaming series such as Call of Duty , Guitar Hero , Tony Hawk and more in 2011 and beyond. Activision currently has a market value of $16 billion (£10 billion). Guitar Hero alone grossed more than $1 billion last year. "It was as big as Titanic [the film] with better margins," boasts Kotick. Via The Times Related Stories In Depth: The evolution of gaming graphics Exclusive: Native iPhone 3G S gaming a long way off Wii bowling ball accessory breaks cover Steve Ballmer confirms Natal Xbox 360 for 2010 Alt-Delete: Hollywood does videogame comedy

In Depth: The evolution of gaming graphics

Matt Jo — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 15:30:00 +0000

Whenever you got into gaming, we're sure you were impressed by it at the time. It can be tough to remember, but over the last 30 years, we've moved from simple shapes floating around black screens pretending to be spaceships, all the way through simple sprites, full-screen cartoons, full-motion video and early experiments in 3D, and into blisteringly detailed virtual worlds that we can explore at will. Right now, the likes of Crysis and GTA4 are the bleeding edge. Before long, they'll look bleeding awful. Our jaw-dropping first drive through the rebuilt Liberty City will be as quaint as Space Invaders to the gamers of the future as they sit in front of their PCs, munching sci-fi snacks such as Mars bars and Galaxies and Doctor Hula Hoops and wondering how we lived in the days before we could walk our game characters up to our own houses, peek through the virtual curtains and see ourselves sitting at our computers going "Neat". Part of the problem with these games is that they set out to simulate reality, albeit in a stylised way. This is impressive at the time of release, but as time moves on, so do our techniques and technologies. In the case of 3D games, one particularly noticeable sign of age is that it took years before characters were capable of moving their lips while they talked, instead of just staring and nodding as a line of dialogue played. STILL GOT IT: The hand-drawn Broken Sword games have grown old gracefully Conversely, games that focus on artistry rather than technology often hold onto their looks surprisingly well decades later. Adventure games from the 1990s are a perfect example. Many look every bit as old and retro as they are, but no low resolutions or old processors can detract from the sheer artistry dripped into games such as Sam and Max Hit The Road , Gabriel Knight , or of course, Broken Sword , which was recently re-released on both Nintendo DS and Wii. Is it a bird? No, it's a plane For most of the 1980s, artistic merit of any sort took a distant second place to simply trying to hammer the primitive graphics of the time into something that the player would find vaguely recognisable. Early PC developers barely bothered at all. It was far easier to draw a map and make a strategy game, throw together something simple such as an Arkanoid clone, or sidestep the thorny issue completely by developing yet another text adventure. The PC was still thought of as primarily a work machine and it would be years before that preconception changed. NEW ANGLE: Isometric games add a level of depth to early gamers' adventures What separated this era of gaming from the likes of Crysis (if you ignore roughly 15 quantum leaps in various areas of technology) was that tricks such as these were essential. Elite used wireframe 3D graphics on most platforms because that was as much as they could hope to handle. Most games assumed the player would understand that principle, although some built it into the fiction of the game. Starglider was one of these, shipping with a novella to explain that the wireframe graphics were actually a tactical aid built into your HUD. Reading it was also your best way of realising that the game wasn't actually set in the depths of space and that the reason you took damage if you flew too far in a downward direction was that the big black bit at the bottom of the pitch black background was in fact 'the ground'. Games of this era were nothing short of a war between programmers and their machines. The Commodore 64, released in 1982, was a surprisingly powerful system, but games on platforms such as the ZX Spectrum could be instantly identified by their bright, clashing colours – particularly when dealing with conversions from more powerful arcade cabinets. The art style was mainly a way of compensating for the system and used tricks such as setting translucent characters against coloured backgrounds, or promoting the graphical details by making the active game area a single colour, with objects outlined in black and all other colours saved for the frame. BACK IN TIME: Space Quest IV used time-travel to let its hero revisit his own prequels Sprites were simple and often very stylised, Dizzy the adventuring egg being one of the most enduring icons. Most games were happy to throw almost anything into the mix, from remote-controlled heads to a Monty Python stomping foot. The most surprising thing is that some of the creators weren't high. Pretty and programmed The PC was largely left out of all this craziness through most of the 80s, thanks to developers focusing on three rather serious genres: adventures, RPGs and simulators. Technology limitations meant that the early simulations had enough to worry about just drawing the ground and a couple of aeroplanes to shoot at, but the RPGs almost went out of their way to be ugly. Graphics were kept firmly in their place, and that place was frequently a small box framed by the far more important stats and menus. It wasn't until Ultima VII in 1992 that we saw an original PC RPG where the visuals stood up as state of the art against its contemporaries. PRETTY FACE: Ultima was one of the first RPGs to make an effort to look attractive Adventure games took a totally different direction, to the point that, until 3D came along, they were the place to see the latest graphical styles. The first major graphic adventure, King's Quest , released in 1984, was designed as a showpiece for the PC. No mean feat, considering how bad our favourite platform's graphics were at the time. The basic colour graphics format was the hideous Color Graphics Adapter. This typically ran at a resolution of 320x200 and resulted in some of the ugliest graphics seen by mortal eyes. UGLY PALETTE: CGA graphics were barely passable in 1984, and time has not been kind It had 16 colours to play with, but they were split into two palettes containing six hues (with two blacks each), which developers had to choose from. The first was the 'winter' palette, offering cyan, white, grey/white and magenta. The second offered green, red, brown and yellow. There were ways of squeezing more power out of CGA, including setting the background colour to blue and thus having the full RGB set to play with, or switching palettes while drawing the screen. Another trick was to abuse the poor quality screens at the time, putting down dithered patterns of dots and letting the display blend them into the required colour. All very clever stuff, but clearly hack territory. Nobody at all shed a tear when CGA was booted aside in favour of EGA and VGA. To catch a sprite In the days of CGA, everything was incredibly simple. With EGA, artists could finally start cutting loose. Backgrounds became more detailed. Shading could finally be more subtle – if not by much – than simply overlaying dots on bits of the screen that were meant to be in shadow. However, in both cases, the results looked like the computer generated graphics that they were. Backgrounds were clearly made up with simple lines and fills, with blocky characters overlaid on top. This changed dramatically when VGA entered the picture. VGA allowed for 256 colours at once, giving artists much more freedom. Games such as King's Quest V and Monkey Island 2 replaced computer generated backgrounds with scanned-in paintings, giving their worlds an incredible sense of detail and atmosphere. Spare colours could be used for effects, such as flickering lights, gradients and proper shading. DETAILS, DETAILS: VGA games used every trick going to make backgrounds look attractive Interestingly, this usually only applied to the backgrounds. It quickly became acceptable to have different styles for the overlaid characters, typically keeping them cartoony, regardless of their settings. This was primarily a logistical issue, given the number of animation frames that would have to be stored and created, but few minded. Many games were quite happy to chop and change media types on the fly, whether by kicking off with a 3D rendered introduction (as in King's Quest VI , Syndicate and almost every early CD game), or showing detailed pictures of characters in conversations. One media mix that never worked well in this context was FMV, partly due to the often woeful production values of the games that used it, but mostly because of issues with converting footage into something that could be used as a game sprite. Low resolutions turned them into a blurry mess and higher resolutions hammered home how badly the non-antialiased sprites sat in the world. As just one example, an FMV character will always have more superfluous detail than a cartoon one, leading to more obvious problems if their walk cycles get broken - frequently making it harder to read body language. Rendered 3D figures suffered from these problems as well, but rarely to such a degree. The only games that made the leap successfully simply used the original footage as a starting point, rather than trying to implement it into the game as-was. These included Prince of Persia with its rotoscoped character animations, and Tex Murphy , which avoided having 2D versions of its characters in the 3D game world wherever possible, and simply cut to a full-on blue-screened FMV sequence for conversations and important actions. It was jarring, but consistent. All of this gave the early 90s a fascinating look. It was an era of mixed media, with classic animation sitting alongside revolutionary new ideas. Free of the constraints of flat colours and simple shapes, developers jumped at the chance to create unique worlds. NO FUN: We'd scream too if our world was made up of such clashing styles In adventures, we saw everything from the pure cartoon style of Day of the Tentacle to photographic/3D rendered hybrids in the likes of Lost in Time , to early attempts to put real people into the mix during the horrific age of interactive movies. One of the most bizarre was Darkseed , which featured two worlds: ours, and a Dark World based on the biomechanical paintings of HR Geiger. (There was talk at the time that the artists needed therapy due to this, but we call bull on that one…) Before there was 3D The success of 3D accelerator cards heralded the birth of a new era for PC games – one where 3D is mother and father and little sister all rolled into one. This is a good thing. Sprites have to be created frame by frame, which makes them inherently limited. Put a skeletal structure in a 3D model and it can do anything from pick up a laser gun to dance the tango, not to mention perform subtle actions such as making eye contact or following you around the room. 3D models also have depth, whereas sprites are just cardboard cutouts. Using the same engine for them and the backgrounds also helps reinforce the notion of a consistent world that characters can interact with. However, PCs powerful enough to make the most of 3D are a recent development and for a long time, sprites vs polygons was a genuine debate. Elite had wireframe polygons back in 1984, as did the first Star Wars space simulator, X-Wing , in 1993. Until Quake in 1996, which also gave the mainstream its first true 3D shooter, almost every FPS was sprite-based, with exceptions such as Terminator: Future Shock few and far between. PROGRESS: Floppy disks eventually became big enough for proper cartoon fun The main reason for this was that sprites offered more detail than the polygons of the time could handle. Much like the early days, it was fine to have simple iconic shapes for spaceships and the like, which is why X-Wing 's instantly recognisable ship silhouettes worked so well. However, early games didn't even have texture mapping (instead relying on simple colours and shading based on the position of the area's light source) and 3D characters were awkward-looking, low-polygon affairs. With sprites, if you could draw it, the computer could handle it. When making Doom , id actually modelled several of its more complicated characters in clay then photographed them from multiple angles to maintain consistency. The first Wing Commander games used a clever trick to fake space, simply moving and scaling sprites in front of the camera to add depth. It fell down when approaching capital vessels, but made for instantly recognisable ships and graphical assets that sat comfortably alongside the character portraits used in menus and cut-scenes. SERIOUS FIREPOWER: As dodgy as it looks now, Outcast was a stunning game in 1999 - if your PC could handle it. Most couldn't 3D was much slower to impress on anything other than a technological level. Quake was a particular disappointment, regardless of its technical prowess. Doom gave us a whole cast of memorable enemies to shoot at, ranging from the humble Imp to the awe-inspiring Cyberdemon. Few of Quake 's blocky, blurry opponents came close, outside of the leaping Fiend and hulking demon Cthon. Not until Sin and Half-Life in 1998 did 3D characters start to impress and even then, the fact that most of them were still animated frame by frame made them feel stodgy. Half-Life 's skeletal animations provided freedom, even if they did usher in several years of comedy ragdolls. Adventures in hyperreality As with the dawn of 2D, 3D games quickly began splitting art styles along genre lines. This was typically done for pragmatic reasons rather than stylistic ones. The more restrictive the game, the more realistic its world could be. Driving games such as Midtown Madness , Driver and GTA could get away with something that pretended to be a real city by confining players to roads and other external locations where real-world textures could turn a simple box into a credible store or tower block. EASY RIDE: Driving games have it easier than most. You don't see much detail at 100MPH Most games stuck with a different approach: creating the illusion of reality, not trying to recreate the actual thing. The more games tried to do this, the more they hit the Uncanny Valley problem – deviations from the expected that break the suspension of disbelief. The simplest solution was to shunt things around a little by setting a game in the future, or in a lab, or in many cases, just not trying too hard. When Tomb Raider 3 set a level in Saint Paul's Cathedral, the challenge was conveying that vibe with a game engine that had only just developed the ability to build levels using triangles instead of square blocks, not recreating reality. Similarly, Deus Ex took great pains to trash New York and Gabriel Knight III devoted as much effort to recreating the village of Rennes-le-Chateau as the Tomb Raider team did to King Midas's crypt. It didn't matter. Much as the classic 2D games hinted at a world beyond the bits that you got to visit, the best 3D games feel like there's more going on behind the invisible walls that block your passage. TAKING OFF: Despite the dramatic music and statues, you can still cross Stormwind faster than you can say 'Not very big, is it?' It'd be wrong to say that current games aren't constrained by technology, but the challenge is different. With modern graphics, we can create almost anything to an acceptable level. The challenge comes from the difficulty of creating all the necessary assets, with level design stretched across multiple disciplines, from 3D modelling to animation and physics calculation. The next step, along with increasing the polygon count and texture resolution, is likely to be to take as much of the load away from the artists as possible to create bigger worlds that retain the handcrafted look. Wherever games go next, they're going to look fantastic. Related Stories Exclusive: Native iPhone 3G S gaming a long way off Wii bowling ball accessory breaks cover Steve Ballmer confirms Natal Xbox 360 for 2010 Alt-Delete: Hollywood does videogame comedy Activision threatens to stop making PS3 games

Analysis: Why Xbox Project Natal is a game-changer

Matt Jo — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:15:00 +0000

The same question keeps popping up: "how can Sony and Nintendo possibly top this ?" Microsoft's E3 press conference started out as a parade of games most people either knew or strongly suspect were happening. Then, towards the end, they dropped the bombshell to end all bombshells. Project Natal, a sky-high ambitious body/face/voice recognition add-on for the Xbox 360 that, if it works as promised, changes not just the 360, not just gaming, but how humankind interfaces with technology. Rumours had swirled for a while that Microsoft, jealous of the Wii's success with non-traditional gamers, was about to reveal some sort of motion sensing device for their own console. Project Natal would seem to stem from that jealousy, but it goes much, much further than the expected response/rip-off. In another world, Natal would be a whole new console of its own – that Microsoft has gone to such R&D lengths for the now relatively elderly 360 proves how desperate it is to win this round of the console wars. And with good cause – this is the generation of console that's most poised to climb beyond being mere game-boxes. There's the PS3 with its Blu-Ray drive, and the 360's own movie downloads – about to be improved further with mooted instant-play 1080p high-def streams – and even the Wii's music, photo and browser applications. 1080p STREAMS: As well as HD insta-streaming (via variable bitrates), you can host virtual film nights- inviting your friends' avatars to appear as an on-screen audience. The time is right for the living room omni-device, and that reveals the real purpose of Project Natal – Microsoft are finally making their own PC, or rather a ground-up-reworked alternative to the venerable IBM-compatible. Natal may well enable all manner of fun body-popping games that are comparable to the Wii's line-up but with the controller replaced by camera-based recognition of gestures. But it was its use as an operating system that really reveals the startling scale of this project. With a wave of the hand, blades of the 360's dashboard UI and pages of photos are shuffled through, or items grabbed and moved to other parts of the screen. Video chat uses facial recognition. Movies are controlled by voice – no remote required. Outdoing Windows 7 - and everything else Microsoft's own Windows 7 team, working on the next iteration of the desktop operating system, must be feeling pretty hard-done by right now: their own company has utterly overshadowed them. But probably not as hard done by as the poor Tony Hawk's Ride team, who trotted onto stage earlier in the conference to show off their new skateboard controller. Half an hour later, we see a kid playing a skateboarding game without any controller whatsoever – only Natal's all-seeing eye. FACEBOOK 360: Does Facebook and Twitter support make the 360 the iPhone of the living room? As well as Natal was the revelation of built-in Facebook and Twitter support for the 360 – and again, if this all works, it really does seem like an all-out assault on the PC. Socialising, multimedia and gaming are three of the major pillars supporting the modern computer. TWITTER INTEGRATION: The Twitter and Facebook apps are tightly integrated with the 360's Avatar system, which could cause something of a schism between 360 social-networkers and PC ones. If there's now a device that does all this, in the living room and on your big telly, and without the need for any input device bar your own body, we could be in for a truly profound change in the man-machine relationship. Really, the only thing holding back massive future-shock at this point is Microsoft's long-tradition of not getting exciting things quite right. Until the press at large gets to try and report on Natal first-hand, the world will keep spinning as always. Meantime, pity Sony and Nintendo – right now, they must be feeling a little like they're the follow-up act after Jesus fed the five thousand. Related Stories Nintendo Wii Fit Plus leaked ahead of E3 Hulu next for Xbox 360, says Twitter tweet E3 2009: Xbox: 1080p streaming VOD and Facebook E3 2009: Microsoft 'Project Natal' will replace controller E3 2009: Seven highlights of the Xbox E3 keynote

Aldi selling cheap PC with 1TB hard drive

Matt Jo — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Aldi is set to stock Medion's latest all-powerful PC, packing in a whopping one terabyte hard drive for only a penny under £600 this month. The PC ships with a three-year warranty and, as well as packing in some serious power and hard drive capacity under the hood, also looks pretty smart with it. "Music lovers can take advantage of its 1000 GB S-ATA hard drive which offers space for over 200,000 tracks," reads Aldi's press release, "and if you fancy getting snap happy there is plenty of space for all your pictures." Medion's latest runs Windows Vista Home Premium 32 Bit – though of course if you are like us you'll immediately upgrade to Windows 7 the second you get it home! Aldi's claiming the PC is designed for families, students, movie-buffs (with a Blu-ray drive included) and even gamers - packing in and NVIDIA GeForce GT 230 DirectX 10 graphics card "for fantastic visual clarity with games and multimedia applications."

Aldi selling £599 PC with 1TB hard drive

Matt Jo — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:00:00 +0000

Zune arriving on Xbox 360 in the UK

Matt Jo — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:02:00 +0000

A service called Zune Video will be arriving on the Xbox 360 in key markets including the UK, with Microsoft confirming that it will pair two of its brands as it separately announced a new Zune media player for the US. Zune Video, a 'revised' service to the current US Zune Marketplace, will arrive in the UK on Xbox Live, as well as in the US, France, Italy, Germany, Ireland and Spain. In an interview with the Guardian , ahead of the official announcement later this week, Microsoft's Chris Stephenson explained the thinking behind moving Zune to Xbox. "Xbox as a platform is broadening its audience, growing beyond games into living room entertainment," said Stephenson. "That's what's driven the prioritisation of an enhanced Zune video service to Xbox… It's about changing the way people think about entertainment." Not a Zune-gamer phone The revelation falls far short of some predictions that a Zune mobile phone or portable games console was all set to be unveiled. Meanwhile, confirmation of a new Zune player have been released, with Reuters posting up some of the details in a brief report . The new Zune HD will, as the name suggests, incorporate high definition video, have a touch-screen and Wi-Fi connectivity. The WiFi heralds the arrival of a web browser, and there will also apparently be an internet radio and the promise of better quality radio playback. "Yes. We've got a tremendous device," added Stephenson. "This is a fantastic piece of hardware and absolutely it's going right up against iPod Touch; it's hyper competitive against that product. Stephenson also talked more about the potential for gaming on the Zune, stating in the same Gurdian games blog article: "Well, gaming on the handheld device is definitely a big opportunity for us, we have the DNA in our business. "We're not talking specifically about the gaming aspect of our hardware platform at the moment, but it's definitely something that over time, we want to step up, and we'll have more announcements around that in the future." Related Stories In Depth: Wii 2 - everything you need to know Competition: WIN! An Xbox 360 and the new Chronicles of Riddick game EA launches PS3 Sports Complex Rumour: Skinny PlayStation 3 at E3 Guest column: don't fall for PS3 virus alerts

Microsoft Gaming Patents — Where They’re Going

Matt Jo — Sun, 24 May 2009 20:10:00 +0000

An anonymous reader writes "BNET looked at some patents which suggest that Microsoft might be thinking about an integrated game console/set-top box. Quoting: 'Patent 20080167128 is for watching television on a game console, while patent 20080167127 covers switching a gaming console between various media, including television, video, music, and games, and even using the console as a set-top box. Clearly Microsoft has been interested in controlling the living room, and combining media, gaming, and set-top functions in a single device would make a great deal of sense.' There are also hints of mobile gaming that support the current round of rumors about a combination Xbox-Zune. " Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Sony halves its number of suppliers

Matt Jo — Thu, 21 May 2009 14:02:00 +0000

The Sony Corporation is set to halve the number of suppliers it uses over the next two years in an effort to cut costs, but those rumours of an imminent price cut for its PlayStation 3 console still refuse to go away. Sony announced its plans to cut its fixed costs by more than 300 billion yen this week. PS3 price cut? The announcement has lead to a number of leading gaming news outlets predicting that Sony's latest round of cost cutting might help the company to make the much-needed PS3 price cut that many gamers have been crying out for. "I'm not sure how effective this is because it's just operational streamlining and wouldn't simply push up earnings or bear fruit immediately," Mizuho Investors Securities analyst Nobuo Kurahashi told Reuters. Sony has forecast an operating loss of 110 billion yen in the year to March 2010 and is set to cut 16,000 jobs and close down 14 per cent of its 57 manufacturing sites. Related Stories Sega announces new Pilates game for Wii New Carol Vorderman keep fit game on DS Exclusive pics of the Queen's "Royal Wii" Turn your iPhone into an iGameboy Game of 'Where The Wild Things Are' announced

LittleBigPlanet to Get a Web Portal to Make Level Sharing Easier

Matt Jo — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:00:10 +0000

Media Molecule co-founder Alex Evans recently told 1UP that a new website would be launched to support LittleBigPlanet. The LBP portal will allow players to advertise their created levels and...

World of Warcraft devs named most bankable

Matt Jo — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:47:00 +0000

World of Warcraft makers Blizzard have been named as the most bankable games studio in the Develop 100 list, ahead of last year's leader Nintendo and British developers Rockstar North. The Emergent sponsored Develop 100 from Develop Magazine has been publishing its list of the most bankable developers for five years, and it is MMO giants Blizzard that currently head their rankings. Public WoW-ed World of Warcraft is a massively profitable operation, with millions of people worldwide paying a subscription fee to adventure in the fictional world of Azeroth. A second expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King was released in November last year, and jumped straight to the top of the bestsellers' list. Of the 26 UK studios listed in the hot 100 Rockstar North (3rd), Traveller's Tales (12th), Media Molecule (18th) and Lionhead (22nd) are all listed in the top 25. Related Links Develop 100 list Related Stories New Carol Vorderman keep fit game on DS Sony halves its number of suppliers Exclusive pics of the Queen's "Royal Wii" Turn your iPhone into an iGameboy Game of 'Where The Wild Things Are' announced

Ad Showdown Winners Announced

Andres C — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 05:57:28 +0000

Earlier in February Xbox Live members were able to vote for their favorite Super Bowl commercial via the Ad Showdown brought by Microsoft from MSNBC.com. Out of all the commercials, the following 10 received the most votes by the Xbox Live community:

Transformers 2, Movie Trailer
Doritos, Power of the Crunch
Go Daddy.com, Shower
E*Trade, Baby Talk
Pepsi Max, Pepsi Max
Year One, Movie Trailer
Hyundai, Contract
Angels and Demons, Movie Trailer
Fast & Furious Movie, Trailer
Gatorade, Tiger

Out of all the visitors to the Ad Showdown, one will receive a grand prize including a high-definition TV, home theater, an Xbox 360 Elite, and a one-year membership to Xbox Live. The winner should announced next week and details can be found by clicking here.

Video Games Live Opens Taiwan International Music Festival Today

Andres C — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 05:23:38 +0000

Video Games Live is very excited to announce their participation in the opening act for the annual Taiwan International Music Festival starting today, February 20th. The show will be at the Chiang-Kai Shek Memorial with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra and will last approximately 2 hours. The performance will be free and 100,000 people are expected to attend. Aside from their usual performance, attendees will be treated to synchronized fireworks through parts of the show. Make sure to click the link to find future performance dates by Video Games Live.

Ubi to Release The Official FarCry 2 Map Editing Guide

Andres C — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:32:37 +0000

Ubisoft announced today that they will publish a book titled Designing Wargames: The Official Far Cry 2 Map Editing Guide in a partnership with Charles River Media. The book will be written by gamers, for gamers and is scheduled to be published in the Spring of 2009. FarCry 2 fans and map-makers can get more information on contributing to the book by visiting http://www.farcrybook.com/.

Epic’s Cliff Bleszinski Appears on G4 TV’s X-Play

Andres C — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:41:31 +0000

Cliff Bleszinski is Epic Games' Design Director; you probably know about their latest game, Gears of War 2. Earlier today Cliff was on G4 TV's X-play and talked about the new title update released yesterday and some fun statistics about the game. Gears of War 2 is exceeding their expectations with 4 million copies sold and put their latest Combustible map pack on top as the number 1 premium downloadable content for the month of December. Make sure to check the full video by clicking here and to join us on Gears of War 2 to get those new Horde achievements!

Gronar Featured on TriXie’s Gamer Spotlight

Rich Reed — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 06:23:38 +0000

Oh Lord, Help us all no this is not a typo or joke. In fact our very own Gronar is featured on TriXies Gamer Spotlight on Xbox.com. Hey we love to bust on Jim but he is always around for us and others. So we want to congratulate him on this honor. Many of our members may also want to read this to learn more about Gronar our resident Halo fan boy you maybe surprised at what he shares. Jim has also helped serve the Xbox Live Community by being an Xbox Ambassador for over a year now. I just wanted to take a few minutes and post this since it is a real honor. I still wonder if our phone call to TriXie on our last podcast had anything to do with the choice. Just Joking Jim congrats from the entire staff and members here at Xboxsolution.com.

Crysis Wallpaper Contest at Official Crysis Web Site

Jason Rybka — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 23:15:01 +0000

I just got word that the folks over at EA are offering up an Ultimate Edition of Windows Vista for a wallpaper contest they are running. As far as i know Crysis is coming out on PC (Vista) only, so no luck for us 360 owners, yet.

If you're artistically inclined, or steal other people's work easily (just kidding) head on over to the official Crysis web site for the details.